Our Year 9 students have been exploring Australian literature and have written pieces of their own. You can read some examples of these pieces below:
Daffodil
Sat lonely in a field of yellow, surrounded by others, it’s yellow heart bowed down low, accepting the brush of passing wind. The hand reached downwards and separated it from its roots.
The flower did not speak as it could not. Its fate was set as much as it believed it was to its roots. Not anymore.
This was the moment of realisation. The world became so much bigger than the field from which it belonged. The world around it spun as the girl, much larger than it, twirled it between her fingers.
A foreign language, a reply. A scatter of bouncing words. Then, discarded. Left to decompose., to rejoin the cycle of nature. Detached and reconnected.
The daffodil lies lonely in a field of green. Surrounded by none, waiting, dying.
Year 9B Student
Snake
They say snakes are sly, slimy and secretive.
They say snakes lie.
A symbol of evils and untruths,
But that itself is a lie,
For never a dishonest snake has lived
Nor an evil or malicious one.
Instead they just get by, living their lives
Spending each day as an outcast.
Stephanie Forrest
In Year 9 Australian Literature we have been doing some creative writing inspired by Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield. Australian author. She adopts a poetic style of writing about phrases and expressions that she learnt in Wiradjuri, for example:
The way things are: High Heels
The Earth is running on high heels, the way we are going. We keep going and going towards an unstable future and soon, any wrong step will break our ankles and leave us there to die a slow and painful death as a society. The Earth is running on high heels, the way we are going, precariously balanced on a tight rope. One wrong step and we fall.
Hugo Brown
We read Tim Winton’s views about sharks, and our intrinsic feeling of fear related to the animal.
Shark
The vilified shark
Iconically monolithic
Just beyond the pale.
So feared yet vulnerable
So easily flensed
Entrails everywhere
A monolithic trophy
Then discarded.
We also did creative writing based on works of art by Australian artists and photographers.
Clear blue skies, the smell of the spiky saltbush and cool eucalypts.
The sound of trees squeaking in the wind,
The feeling of dried crackling grass between my toes,
One foot above the other. I can hear the whipbirds calling.
It’s September so they are looking for a mate.
My mates are all in Sydney studying for College.
The cool breeze brings me back to reality,
The feeling of walking under trees in the sun,
Warm, cool, warm, cool as I go from shade to sun.
I can see about a hundred roos going through the creek,
Splash…splash…splash as they bound through.
Jessica Foster
I hide behind thin gum trees.
My limbs are covered by the rough bark. I peek out slowly and
look at the people at the fire. I wish I could join them.
When they sleep I clear up their camp site.
When they are lost I help them home.
I will not show myself to them; they will be scared.
Instead I silently look on.
When there is danger I protect them,
When they are hungry I kill for them.
I only wish I could join them at the crackling fire.
I wish I could feel its warmth and laugh like they do.
I cannot speak, I have no words.
When they look at me I am nothing more than a sapling swaying gently in the wind.
When they turn their heads to look at the huge red rocks,
Or the tall brittle grass,
I become like them. I grow spindly fingers and long arms,
I grow long legs and sturdy feet.
They look back, they swear they saw something move,
But they only see trees.
Bea Hermann
We read Dorothea Mackellar’s poem My Country and thought about the sculpture at the Arboretum
Though “wide brown land” has meaning and when told this most will always think of Australia, but I think a better set of words is “opal-hearted country”. These words come from the same poem and have meaning and symbolism. The opal is a beautiful stone that is the national stone of Australia. And the heart is the source of life and is associated with care and emotion, so opal-hearted can mean Australian hearted, patriotic, beautiful heart, which often means kind, caring and charitable, among other things. “Country” refers to the land and the people, so it could mean we are a patriotic people and we are a beautiful country. Many other places can be called a wide brown land and most of Australia isn’t brown but many shades or red, yellow and orange, while the edges are green. Personally, I love this statue because of all the memories that I have associated with it.
